Lot 68
Unidentified Tlingit Artist
Additional Images
Provenance:
Private Collection, Massachusetts
Private Collection, Toronto, ON
Note:
An early Northern Northwest Coast pipe bowl, likely of Tlingit origin. The body of the pipe is carved in the form of the head of Raven, the notorious trickster-hero of Coast mythology.
As in other early Northwest Coast pipes, the body is of blade-carved and faceted construction with a bowl fashioned from a section of barrel cut from a trade musket and press-fit into the wooden body of the pipe using a fibre wadding. Pipes were used in both personal and ceremonial smoking, and were sometimes associated with funerary ritual.
The use of fire-resistant gun barrels to form the bowls of wooden smoking pipes served a practical purpose, however the visual and symbolic affinities of the two objects are unlikely to have been lost on makers, who were steeped in an artistic tradition that celebrated punning.
Palmer Jarvis, "Objects of Ceremony, Commerce and Art", Native American Art Magazine, No. 23, October and November 2019.